Marvel Heroes is being shut down

Not Diablo news but I know some of you will have played Marvel Heroes as David Brevik was heavily involved with the game until early 2016. Out of the blue, Disney has decided to pull the plug. Always good to keep you guys up to date with major ARPG news.

Marvel Heroes first appeared back in 2013 and has gone through numerous changes and relaunches since then. David Brevik eventually became CEO of Gazillion before he departed the studio in January 2016. Nobody is quite sure why Gazillion is being closed but declining player numbers and possible licensing issues with Disney could be the cause amongst other things.

Gazillion issued the following statement today.

“We’re sad to inform our players and our entire Marvel Heroes family that Marvel Heroes Omegawill be shutting down. The Marvel Heroes servers will stay on until Dec 31, 2017, and we’ll be removing real money purchases as soon as possible. Players will be able to play the game entirely for free once this sunset period commences. We will share the exact date things go completely free as soon as we can.

“We’ve had the privilege of entertaining and collaborating with our players for over four years. We’re extremely humbled by that privilege and wanted to get this message out: Thank you. Thank you to our players, our tireless employees, and everyone involved in the life of Marvel Heroes, Marvel Heroes 2015, Marvel Heroes 2016, and Marvel Heroes Omega.”

It’s rebrand Marvel Heroes 2015 earned a lot of gaming awards from various media and the fans. It also had very positive Metacritic and Steam reviews. By the end of 2015 it had a pretty big following. Then Brevik left and investor idiots ran the game and company down. On top of that the new CEO’s sexual harrasment records became public. Disney’s action was immminent after that.

I was kind of excited in trying this when the beta came out. Was in the very first wave of public invites, but it always crashed on my computer and I eventually just gave up on it. Never got to play it for more than a few minutes, and now it’s dead. Until some bandito makes a server package.

The concept of having a ton of classes was, on its surface, a cool one. Path of Exile kind of demonstrates that if you every class has access to every skill, they quickly feel like mixed together mashed potatoes. (As an example: The gimpy attack spells the Necromancer and Druid have in Diablo 2 are relevant only because they don’t have access to stuff like Frozen Orb and Lightning Fury. MTG designers call this concept of ability division “color pie”.)

In the long tail of things, I thought it could be cool if they could get more IP licensed, like Hero Clix. Batman, Invincible, Hellboy, Spawn – it could have been an incredible insane mashup game for every comic nerd out there.

But reality is what it is, and that was never a possibility. In the end they would have been far more free to create their own IP that they owned, with the ability to make characters reminiscent of these guys. Whose clothing choices didn’t have to be per-approved by a distant authority. (Personally, I would have leaned more toward a Hellboy grimdark world, as older males tend to be the target demographic of these kinds of games.)

Of course the ideal is to own your own baby, instead of it being just another property of a corporation. Disney can make more money putting that cash into the current stock market bubble (which will evaporate in a couple years when everyone realizes that exuberance isn’t the same thing as dividends, and we have another recession), so why waste it on some video game?

Not everyone can take that ideal path of an indie or devote their lives to one game, like our friends at Grinding Gear were able to.